We have the way, now for the will

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Its importance becomes self-evident when organisations or society as a whole are understood to be the product of all the human behaviours interacting within and around them. But organisations typically measure themselves in other ways. The bottom line, for example, can obscure the contribution e-learning makes; the relationship between counting beans and being able to count on people, is only now starting to moderate economic rationalism.

It's not enlightened management that's driving this technology but trainers enthused by the possibilities. E-learning has become a grass-roots phenomenon.

Typically, a line manager contacts a training package developer and, after a few iterations within a test group, the finished product goes live online. This bears a striking resemblance to the introduction of PCs in the mid-'80s, when the first applications were not spreadsheets and word processors, but development tools. If you wanted something done you had to hire a programmer or learn to write programs yourself. But with e-learning, 10 years after the advent of multimedia, line managers can now create their own training packages. E-learning desktop productivity tools are starting to come of age.

One example is Macromedia's RoboDemo, a tool designed to build e-learning simulations - especially how to drive computer programs. This is useful for getting people up to speed with departmental workflows, which often involve multiple computer applications and manual processes. Of course, one can send a worker on a course but they're unproductive for all that time. And someone will still need to hold their hand for a little while when they get back.

But with this tool, line managers can make recordings of their own computer use, which then can be quickly hammered into an e-learning simulation complete with basic quizzes and scoring. These save to Flash presentations playable on any browser or several other formats.

Another example is ToolBook Assistant 4, with this year's release having a maturity making e-learning development accessible to any power user. As an authoring tool, it operates a lot like a drawing package, with no coding required. (It can be extended by hand coding within ToolBook Instructor.) Assistant e-learning programs are built using layers of content placed on pages, ultimately forming a "book" application. This can be saved as a series of Dynamic HTML webpages. RoboDemo, on the other hand, uses a video paradigm with play-through being temporarily stopped for learner interactions.

The two technologies are very different but they share the common trait of being usable by the common people. RoboDemo is faster at courseware development - starting from a couple of hours of work, yet sometimes fiddly to use. Creating an e-learning application in Assistant is slower because it's not based on an initial application recoding. But it's probably better suited for presenting detailed concepts. By saving finished product to Flash and webpages respectively, both systems have facilities to hook into each other.

Assistant is $1495 (academic version) and RoboDemo is $830.

But what's important here is that interesting e-learning applications can be created by any power user and run on any desktop without needing additional software.

The technology has arrived. There's nothing holding e-learning back now except cultural factors.

Most corporate and community leaders don't have an e-learning plan. Yet organisations that do so will be more competitive, able to support more flexible collaborative team-based structures through the rapid dissemination of learning.

In the end, e-learning's competitive advantage will itself weed out managers who don't capitalise on its initially hidden benefits; it's impossible to put this IT genie back in the bottle.